Posted on 10/07/2019 11:55:03 AM PDT by Red Badger
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a challenge to Republican-drawn congressional districts in Ohio that Democrats said were drawn to unlawfully diminish their political clout, a move that follows a major ruling by the justices in June that foreclosed such lawsuits.
The court’s action in the case involving a practice known as partisan gerrymandering means that 16 U.S. House of Representatives districts will no longer be reconfigured, as a three-judge panel had ordered in May.
The Supreme Court had put the panel’s ruling on hold ahead of its rulings, issued the next month, in two major gerrymandering cases from Maryland and North Carolina.
The justices in June dealt a major blow to election reformers by saying in its June 27 ruling that federal courts have no role to play in reining in electoral map manipulation by politicians aimed at entrenching one party in power.
The ruling gave the Ohio challengers little option but to concede defeat.
A similar case from Michigan, in which a lower court invalidated nine Republican-drawn U.S. House districts and 25 state legislative districts, was also put on hold by the Supreme Court in May. An appeal in that case remains pending and would be expected to be dealt with the same way as the Ohio dispute.
The June high court ruling did allow partisan gerrymandering to be challenged in lawsuits based on violations of a state constitution. On Sept. 3, a state court in North Carolina struck down the Republican-drawn state legislative electoral map as an unlawful example of partisan gerrymandering under the state constitution.
In partisan gerrymandering, one political party draws legislative districts to marginalize voters who tend to support the other party. The lines are typically redrawn once a decade after the U.S. census, and in many states the party in power controls the decision-making.
Included in the 2012 Ohio electoral map drawn by Republicans at issue in the case was the “Snake on the Lake,” which the judges called “a bizarre, elongated sliver of a district that severed numerous counties,” referring to the state’s 9th district that runs along Lake Erie. The electoral map consistently led to a lopsided advantage for Republicans in U.S. House races.
The League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union sued to challenge the legality of the map.
So take the case back to state courts. If they strike the districting down, as was the case in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, then it appears the Supreme Court won’t overturn that decision.
Once again exposing the partisan nature of the League of Women Vultures.
Demonrats are level 11 practitioners of this tactic. But will sue sue sue if rethugs try it
At least conservatives do it to minimize corrupt traitorous democrats and do not need to construct districts to get very low IQ easily controlled puppets of color elected who are given baubles and encouraged to pretend to lord it over the population.
If you are conservative, conservative will crawl across a thousand miles of salt encrusted broken glass to elect anybody to office who is conservative and can think for themselves no matter what they look line. Conservatives are desperate to eject the spineless pubs who just want a cushy job with insider trading and benefits. Does anybody really believe the Maxine Waters’s and her puppet ilk from their fake districts have a greater than room temperature IQ?
so....why didn’t yinz guys do the same with the total B.S. case here in Pennsylvania?
We got screwed in Pennsylvania with this ruling in 2018. I lost my Republican rep when my district got lumped in with the city of Pittsburgh. I bet the Democrats think the states run by Democrats are gerrymander just fine in their opinion.
It all comes down to what works best for which party, so no matter what is done will make someone happy & others perhaps very unhappy. Only thing I can think of that would work is to somehow set it up so as to make both parties unhappy.
There is no Democrat Party left...in its place are the Progressives, the Democrat Socialists of America, Communists of America....and a half dozen rag tail organizations all anti-Americans with a large Communist leaning.
Eight years of Milquetoast was enough...President Trump is restoring America's image from a weak, divided nation to a strong and cohesive nation, yeah, clinging to our guns, free speech, and our Constitution.
What about Pennsylvania?
Why should they be any different from Republicans in that regard?
Redistricting is a political process and is rightfully the responsibility of the State legislature. Interference by courts or abrogation to a so called bipartisan panel is a travesty. Gerrymandering is the logical outcome of this process from both parties. Their decision should stand unless resulting districts are not approximately equal in population.
I agree completely that redistricting is a state matter and not a federal one. And if it's going to wide up under judicial review then it needs to be state courts and not federal courts.
Agree, unfortunately many state courts are political cesspools, dominated by the Left.
OHIO PING!
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U.S. Supreme Court Tosses Challenge to Republican-Drawn Ohio Congressional Maps
IJR.com ^ | October 7, 2019, 11:35 am | (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
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